Opinion: Road pricing has moved beyond transportation wars

Claire Havens, Special to the Vancouver Sun11.26.2013

The realization is we are all in this together; it’s no longer my bus versus her bike versus his car. It’s how do we reduce commute times, improve mobility options, and guarantee a good quality of life? We’re all in it together, says Claire Havens, of SFU’s Centre for Dialogue.

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The public is past polarized debates when it comes to the potential for road pricing in Metro Vancouver.

That was the clear message we received over the past few weeks when SFU’s Centre for Dialogue asked citizens across the region to give their thoughts on road pricing and different potential systems. We are still analyzing the data, but one thing is clear: out of the nearly 100 people we engaged, not one participant came out to say road pricing should be off the table.

We recruited people from across Metro Vancouver to participate in four dialogues, and selected participants first by their preferred mode of transportation, and then by demographics. The result was a room full of engaged drivers, cyclists, walkers, truckers and transit users, with wildly varying degrees of knowledge about our regional transportation system.

All transportation modes cost money. But who pays, and how we pay for each mode varies greatly when we discuss mobility pricing. If you ride transit for example, mobility pricing is the balance between the public funding provided by the government and what’s dropped into the fare box, while if you drive it can be described as the difference between the subsidy for bridges and highways, and the revenue from tolls.

Some studies suggest traffic congestion at peak hours in Metro Vancouver is the worst in North America. Moving people across the region faster, while decreasing the environmental and health impacts of personal automobiles, requires increasing the number of trips made by transit, walking and cycling. One way to achieve this goal is through road pricing.

The figures are staggering; Congestion costs the region $755 million annually, while the environmental and health impacts continue to have adverse effects on our quality of life and our wallets. Participants were particularly interested to find out the infrastructure to support cars costs our region $3 billion annually in subsidies, user fees and externalities, compared with $690 million for trucking, $848 million for transit, $62 million for cycling, and $32 million for walking.

We heard what participants liked and didn’t like about different transportation systems, including bridge tolling, high occupancy toll lanes, congestion pricing, and full network pricing such as Oregon’s distance-based pricing program.

One theme prevalent throughout our dialogues; people were concerned with fairness and equity. A system that dings one corner of the region, such as bridge tolls, received less support than a program that would apply to the entirety of Metro Vancouver, while a system that allows drivers to pay a hefty toll to bypass rush-hour traffic was considered inferior to an affordable approach that would reduce traffic congestion across the region. Residents noted that a flexible approach, potentially integrating time-of-day pricing, would be effective in changing people’s behaviour and reducing peak travel times. Some participants suggested lower rates for areas with poor transit service and a lack of alternative mobility options.

Citizens also clamoured for transparency and accountability, and voiced their willingness to accept a system only if the money raised was directed toward improving our transportation system through expanding transit options and road maintenance. People want a system that is easy to understand and implement, and they want to know where the money is going and how decisions are being made.

One of the unexpected outcomes of our dialogues was how willing members of different transportation groups were to having the conversation. We had taxi drivers and pedestrians collectively discussing the conditions for an acceptable system, while bus and truck drivers agreed with cyclists on common principles that would result in reduced traffic and costs, as well as improved transit and cycling infrastructure.

What struck me about these conversations is that common narratives aren’t holding true. People weren’t talking about the “war on the car,” or how cyclists need to learn the rules of the road; the dialogues never once disintegrated into polarized exchanges.

Instead, we found most people were willing to consider a road pricing system that would enhance our multi-modal network to improve mobility options, move goods efficiently, support local economic development, and have a positive impact on our health and the environment.

The realization is we are all in this together; it’s no longer my bus versus her bike versus his car. It’s how do we reduce commute times, improve mobility options, and guarantee a good quality of life as the region braces for a million more people to move into Metro Vancouver by 2040?

Claire Havens works with Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue and is a graduate of SFU’s Master of Public Policy program.

To follow the road pricing discussion, go to http://www.sfu.ca/content/sfu/dialogue/news-and-events/archives/2013/moving-in-metro.html

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